D.F. Malan

Daniel Francois Malan (22 May 1874-7 February 1959) was President of South Africa from 4 June 1948 to 30 November 1954, succeeding Jan Smuts and preceding Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom.

Biography
Daniel Francois Malan was born in Allesverloren, Cape Colony, South Africa on 22 May 1874 to a family of French Huguenot descent, and he obtained a doctorate in divinity from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands in 1905, whereupon he returned to South Africa to become a minister for the Dutch Reformed Church, subsequently engaging in the struggle for the official recognition of Afrikaans as a written language. As a supporter of J.B.M. Hertzog, he was appointed editor of the National Party newspaper De Burger in Cape Town (1915-23), and entered Parliament for the NP in 1919. He was made Minister of Internal Affairs, of Education, and of Public Health in 1924, and became a champion of Afrikaner identity through his bills granting the Afrikaans language official status and his skullful negotiations to adopt a new flag. He opposed the NP's fusion with Jan Smuts' South African Party in 1934, founding the Purified National Party instead. He became leader of the Reunited National Party in 1940. Despite subsequent competition from the right, he managed to unite Afrikaner nationalism behind the NP, which enabled him to win the elections of 1948.

Malan's attempt to incorporate South-West Africa into South Africa failed due to the resistance of the United Kingdom and the United Nations. However, he successfully strengthened the system of apartheid through the 1950 Population Registration Act, requiring everyone over 16 to be registered as white, colored, black, or Asiatic, and be issued with separate identity cards. Marriage between white and non-whites was outlawed, and people of mixed race were denied the vote. He retired in 1954 at the age of 80, and he died in 1959.